Essays on Bioethics [Paperback]

R.M. Hare is well known both for his fundamental work in ethical theory and for his applications of it to practical issues. For this volume he has selected the best of his writings on medical ethics and related topics. The book's chief theoretical interest lies in its synthesis between utilitarian and Kantian ethics, which are shown to have the same practical consequences. The main practical thesis in the book is that we can harm possible people by preventing them from becoming actual people. This thesis, if understood and accepted, would radically alter the terms of the public debate about embryo experimentation and population policy, and (perhaps surprisingly) support a fairly liberal view on abortion. There are also general introductions to medical and psychiatric ethics, and essays on the concept of health, on the morality of experimentation on children, on health care policy, on free will, and on vegetarianism.

1. Medical Ethics: Can the Moral Philosopher Help?
2. The Philosophical Basis of Psychiatric Ethics
3. Health
4. Moral Problems about the Control of Behaviour
5. Possible People
6. When does Potentiality Count?
7.In VitroFertilization and the Warnock Report
8. Embryo Experimentation: Public Policy in a Pluralist Society
9. Little Human Guinea-Pigs?
10. Abortion and the Golden Rule
11. A Kantian Approach to Abortion
12. The Abnormal Child: Moral Dilemmas of Doctors and Parents
13. Prediction and Moral Appraisal
14. Health Care Policy: Some Options
15. Why I am Only a Demi-Vegetarian
References, Bibliography, Index

Listed inNew Titles in Bioethics